Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington, also on Long Island, tied Stuyvesant with eight semifinalists each.

Thomas Colletti, the principal of Ward Melville, said that his school's proximity to Stony Brook University enabled students to use labs there and engage mentors who helped students who had an interest in science.

"We have kids who spend their whole summer in those labs," he said. "They pull all-nighters working on these projects."

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David Brennen, the marketing development manager for Intel, the technology company that sponsors the contest, said as he flipped through the list of semifinalists that he was surprised to see how many attended schools on Long Island.

"I have worked on this for five or six years and suddenly there were names of schools I didn't even recognize, and people who had never entered before," Mr. Brennan said.

The contest, founded in 1942 as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, has long been known as prestigious and fiercely competitive.

The titles of projects this year included "The Search for Cosmic-Ray-Induced Lightning Strokes," "A New Target to Fight Breast Cancer" and "Some Children Left Behind: The Troubling Effects of Middle School Reform on the Body Image Concerns of Sixth Grade Girls."

In all, there were 1,558 entrants representing 486 high schools in 44 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands. The Intel Foundation awards $1,000 to each semifinalist, and a matching amount to the student's school. Each semifinalist is also given a laptop computer. The 40 finalists will be announced on Jan. 25, and the winners, who compete for college scholarships totaling more than $500,000, will be named in March.

The semifinalists are listed atsciserv.org/sts/65sts/06semis.asp.

Correction: January 13, 2006, Friday A picture caption with an article yesterday about the Intel Science Talent Search misstated the number of semifinalists from Hunter College High School. There were two, not eight.